| Hi, Irish. Perhaps you will do better than I have done with this one. I have had some good success with watermelons, but two or three varieties have not liked me!...Lousiana Sweet, Blacktail Mountain, and Long Crimson. THat said, watermelons like deep, loose, rich, and sandy soil.My soil is not sandy so I added copius amounts of sand and local peat mixed with my good topsoil....adding some well rotted horse manure a foot deep in the planting hole.
I start inside early to get July and early August watermelons...when they really hit the spot.
I like to use some IRT plastic mulch to increase heat in the soil. I tend to use something other than a continous strip of plastic as that creates dry soil unless you water a lot.
I fertilize some also. Plentiful amounts of compost and other enrichments like well rotted horse manure are excellent.
Since I have raised watermelons in the same areas for some years, I use Root Shield from Johnny's Seeds to protect against soil fungal diseases. The first two years of raising watermelons should disease free...then watch out.
All in all, I get the greatest satisfaction from raising watermelons of all the many crops I raise...and I like them better than tomatoes or any of the other crops.
Orangeglo [open pollinated] is lucious if you can get them larger than twenty pounds. Allsweet is good as is a few other oldies. Personally I raise more hybrids than ops as I like them a little better. My lone Orangeglo last year had 4 large melons that together weighed 119½ pounds. |
